Yard City Cask Festival

Last Saturday was the annual Yard City Cask Festival put on by the West Sound Brewers over in Bremerton.  The morning started with a nice ferry ride across the sound and a yummy breakfast at the Hi-Lo 15th Street Cafe where one table is located in an old VW bus.  Sadly we did not get to sit in that table :(

The Cask Fest featured nine cask conditioned beers and were all under 5% ABV.  My beer engine box worked great though I was a little jealous of the three-headed monster and the one decorated with lights.  My beer turned out pretty good especially with the less than 2 week turnaround and it had a great centennial hop aroma from the dry hops.

The whole Wayward crew was in attendance with a beer each and Jerome had made some Wayward buttons and some great banners too with the logo.  Overall a great day of drinking a unique and varied collection of session beers and meeting some new brewers.  Big thanks to Matt and the West Sound crew for being such great hosts.  I look forward to next year!!

Credit to Russ for the last four photos.   

Batch #48 - Littly Jimmy Session IPA

Little Jimmy Session IPA

Brewed - March 10, 2012

Style - Mild Ale / Low-Alcohol / IPA

Ingredients:

• 2nd Runnings of the American Barleywine
• 1.0 lbs. Acidulated Malt 

• 0.60 oz. Centennial (60)
• 0.10 oz. Centennial (10)
• 0.15 oz. Centennial (0)
• 1.00 oz. Centennial (Dry for 3 days)

• Wyeast #1056 American Ale (slurry from Schooner)

OG - 1.030
Primary – 9 days
Secondary - 0 days

Kegged -March 19, 2012

FG - 1.005
Attenuation - 83%
ABV - 3.3%


Notes:

• Session IPA hopped with Centennial
• Part 2 of a Parti-Gyle batch; not quite the traditional method where I designed one overall beer and mash to get two beers (one strong and one weak), but this was more about designing the barleywine that I wanted and then using the 2nd runnings to make a low-ABV Session IPA
• First time trying the whole 2nd runnings process and while a little hectic (long sparging time, keeping hot water temp up, boiling two beers simultaneously, scrambling to cool, etc.), it was a learning process in terms of efficiencies, calculating evaporation, runoffs, ending gravities, etc....I hope to do more of these in the future    
• Only brewed a 5-gallon batch specifically to be my first cask-conditioned beer for the upcoming Yard City Cask Festival in Bermerton (more on that later) 
• Original Mash of the Barleywine was at 149° for 90 minutes; after the long 1st sparge, some acidulated malt was added to the top of the mash tun to help with the PH
• Runoff for the IPA was 7.5 gallons
• 60 min boil
• Estimated IBU's ~ 30
• Ferment in the low 70's for hopefully 1 weeks, then a brief dry hop before transferring into the keg and prepping for the cask fest
• Dry hopped for 3 days
• Transferred into the the keg after 9 days; added 2.1 oz. of corn sugar to build ~ 1.8 volumes of CO2 of natural carbonation; condition for 3 days and then cold crash before the festival to get the CO2 in solution